My Weird-Ass Cat

When I was ten, I really, badly wanted a kitten. We already had two cats, but I was insistent. I wanted a sweet, little kitten that would really be mine. My mom, always an animal person, was the first to relent. My dad came around much more reluctantly.

Unfortunately, when we started kitten-hunting, the birthing season hadn’t quite started. So we could only find one kitten—a two-week old black kitten that was found wandering alone by a road. He was half-feral, and when I met him, he jumped out of his carrier and immediately bit me with his not yet fully-developed teeth. My heart melted. My mom suggested we keep looking, but I had already decided. So, I named him Juno and took him home.

We did everything for this cat. We bottle-fed him. We cuddled him at night. We bought him toys and a cat tree. He has gone through no traumas, and should be completely well-adjusted. Should be.

Instead, I have the most anxious cat known to man. We’ve had him for eleven years now, and he still stalks around like he’s worried we’re going to put him into the stew pot. He won’t let anyone pick him up, and yowls and scratches if you try. He barely lets people pet him—if you call for him to come to you, he’ll let you stroke him once and walk away; or, he’ll look over his shoulder at you, show that he knows you want to pet him, and then walk the other direction. He’ll cuddle with you, but it has to be his idea. And when he cuddles with you, he’ll stick his face right into your boobs, purr, and drool all over your chest. He’s smart, too. My sister Rebecca taught him how to do tricks by bribing him with the cream inside Oreos. So you can’t pet him, but you can get a high five from him.

We did not do anything to this cat to make him this way. We have two other pets—Gusty, an orange longhair, and Bella, a husky—who are perfectly normal and well-adjusted. A little dumb, maybe, but that’s not the worst thing in the world. And then we have a half-feral cat with a disturbingly human face and enough intelligence to open latched doors, who bullies the other animals. Lovely. So much for a normal kitten.

But is that really so unexpected? I’m already drawn to “othered” people, why not an “othered” cat? Yes, he’s weird and mean and overweight because he keeps eating the fucking dog food, but he has some good traits. Deep, deep down.

Juno was hit by a car after accidentally getting out in October of 2021. I wasn’t home in LA when it happened—I was in San Diego, celebrating Oktoberfest with my friends Katie and Celia. The weird part is that I had gotten an email from NextDoor that morning, notifying the neighbors that a black cat was hit by a car and killed two streets down from my parents. I had the horrible thought, “What if it was Juno?” Two hours later, my mom called me to tell me the bad news.

Juno was alive, but in critical condition. The black cat from the NextDoor post wasn’t him. His leg had been shattered, my mom told me, but the rest of him was mostly unscathed. He had to go into emergency surgery, which would cost three grand. Three grand we didn’t have.

Juno is an ornery son of a bitch, but he’s a Postman. I think my family all came to a mutual understanding: we were not letting this cat be put down. So I set up a GoFundMe and advertised it everywhere, including on my Saw traps Tumblr.

And people rallied! Aunts and uncles, close friends, strangers on the internet—everyone donated what they could. Katie donated $50. Celia donated $300. Two of my friends who were sharing a studio apartment donated $200. We didn’t make the whole three grand, but we made enough that we could cover the rest. I Venmoed the vet the funds, (seriously, what vet takes Venmo?), and Juno went into surgery.

My mom was the biggest help during all of this. Driving Juno back and forth from the emergency vet, watching him get two different casts, sitting with him and telling him he was a brave boy… She did it all. (And I’m not just saying that because I’ll get an angry text if I don’t include it!)

Since I wasn’t living at home, my bedroom was taken apart and made into a space where Juno could rest. Post-surgery, he had a cast on his leg, and we didn’t want him trying to jump up on anything or quarreling with the dog (or, to a lesser extent, the other cat). So, he got his own bedroom to rest and recover.

Strangely, he was a lot nicer when he was injured. He let my parents and sister pick him up, purred a lot more, and let himself be pet. It was almost like he knew that we had helped him a lot and was expressing his gratitude. Or maybe he was in pain, and thus powerless to resist our terrifying pets.

I didn’t see him much during this time, since I no longer had a bedroom to come home to. But as the months went on, the cast came off, and he was allowed full reign of the house once more. I came home for winter break, and watched him hobble from room to room. As he got better, he became his old self—hissing at the dog, not letting himself be pet. And every day he leaned on that leg a little more.

Now, the asshole supreme is eleven. He’s getting up there in age, and I don’t know how much longer he’ll be around. Another five years, I hope. He’s still ornery and ridiculous and won’t let anyone pick him up uninjured. But he doesn’t limp anymore, and he still screams at me until I lie down in bed so he can bury his face in my chest.

The day of the accident, we didn’t find him on the road. My sister found him cowering under my parents’ bed, hurt and scared. That means that he had to make his way back to the house on a shattered leg. Limping back, not sure if he’s going to bleed out, but determined to make it to a place where he knew he would get help. Home.